The next round of NAFTA negotiations could take place as early as next month. The fifth round ended last Tuesday, with the U.S., Mexico, and Canada deadlocked on a wide range of issues.
President Donald Trump has set a March 2018 deadline for completing negotiations and signing a deal. Francisco Monaldi, a Mexico Center fellow at Rice University’s Baker Institute, says that will be tough to meet.
“The politics of it are very complex, because we have, you know, midterm elections in the U.S. next year,” said Monaldi. “We have presidential elections in Mexico that are going to happen [in] July of 2018, and so that will make it really hard for negotiations to come to a fruitful end.”
Trump has repeatedly threatened to pull out of NAFTA, unless Mexico and Canada agree to revise the deal in the U.S.’ favor. The two countries account for nearly half of all Texas’ exports, including nearly all of its exports of motor vehicle parts and plastics products. Earlier this month, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce projected that a U.S. withdrawal from NAFTA would put nearly 1 million Texas jobs at risk.